Sunday, June 29, 2014

Last week I mentioned some interesting
conversations I’ve had with other writers. One of the topics was whether to publish a book through Amazon’s KDP program.

Until about a year ago, many
self-publishers were praising the program loudly on various forums. The
exclusivity, they said, was worth the five free days, given that the majority
of e-book customers owned Kindles and Amazon sold far more e-books than its
competitors. They also said that with the proper promotion through BookBub and
similar outlets, the downloads were in the thousands and resulting sales
followed, especially for those who were publishing a series.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in
the past three years it’s that trends and effective strategies change at a
pretty fast rate in the world of e-books. Let’s face it, the technology and
opportunities are in their infancy, and many authors are still trying to
figure things out. As soon as a few people start sharing their selling
successes, a few thousand other authors understandably jump on the bandwagon
until it wears itself out.

This is why I’m not surprised to hear
colleagues state that KDP is not the best e-book marketing strategy anymore, particularly for
those of us who live in Canada, and/or set our books in Canada, and intend to
sell our books through Kobo. I’ve met a growing number of Canadians over the
past two years who’ve chosen to read on Kobo rather than Kindle. Not
surprisingly, more authors appear to be selling through Kobo than they were two
years ago. All this, of course, is anecdotal evidence, but my findings are
on the same page as another writer who’s gone into much more detail about his
non-KDP experience.

Writer Nick Stephenson provides a detailed
chart on his blog showing exactly what went on with his sales after he left the
KDP program. In fact, he’s written a series of blogs about his experiences,
which are worth checking out.

I know it’s hard to find, let alone keep up
with, effective strategies. But now that writers like Nick are sharing
pertinent information, I suspect that other writers will jump the KDP ship as
well.

I won’t be ready to self-publish anything for
another couple of years. But I’m quite sure that today’s trends and strategies
won’t be the same.